Itinerary and report
Report edited by Andrew Missingham (all personal views, and first person interjections are his) 'Wednesday 10th February, 2010' 11am meeting with Peter Osei, Interim Chief Exec at CIDA , Martin Rees (Workspace Specialist) and Lucy Kyle (Business Advisor) Main points from Lucy's presentation were: *The first step for creative individuals is for them to realise that their endeavour can be a business. This is a conceptual shift before they can be trained in business skills. *Networking and informal networks is one of the best means in which to assist creative individuals and businesses. Main points from Martin's presentation: *When putting together creative business units, the greatest demand is for the smallest spaces (e.g. 15 sq m). These go first *To maintain turnover of creative businesses in incubators, there should be an rental "escalator", that starts with a heavy subsidy, but (by year 3 of occupancy for instance) is substantially above market rent. *Despite rental escalators, the network and clustering effect is so strong that businesses still tend to stay in creative workspaces beyond incubation. *Work to get a high net/gross ratio (of around 85%) when renovating space - i.e. of the available floorspace, 85% or over should be rentable. *Therefore don't spend money on fancy lobbies or entrances - creative businesses don't care! *Do one thing well - don't try to own and cluster different types of operation (e.g. at different stages of the process, like an art gallery or cafe). These rarely work. *Employ an accountant before an architect. Getting the business of a creative workspace is far more important than fancy design8. Creative businesses prefer to be in renovated historical spaces to being in new offices. note from AM: This seems to bear out the conclusions of my "[http://www.slideshare.net/amissingham/creativity-filter-3286837 Creativity Filter" model, where heritage informs the creative landscape.] 12.30pm Walking tour of Brick Lane & Cheshire Street This walk was intended to be an introduction to two key streets in the creative district of Shoreditch/Spitalfields/Hoxton. There are three main factors that delegates needed to bear in mind at the start of the walking tour: *The area has historically been a poor area of London. *The area has historically attracted immigrants, and been an area of high cultural diversity (e.g. Huguenots, Jews, Bangladeshis and Somalians) *The area has a reputation of being one of the UK’s hotspots of the creative economy. It is arguable that the third factor is a result of the first two. The first stop was Hoxton Square, which is arguably the epicentre and birthplace of this area's status as a creative quarter. Creative businesses have come and gone as rents have risen, or companies grow (e.g. Miloco and Somethin' Else), whilst established creative businesses have located as the quarter's status grows (e.g. The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and White Cube Gallery ). Similarly, the square is occupied by a number of “luxury” apartment blocks. This highlighted *a) the churn of businesses in creative quarters and *b) the difficulty to retain creative businesses as their presence acts as a motor or magnet for other sectors of the economy and as the area improves. The challenge to municipalities and policymakers is how to either retain an area’s status as a creative quarter (encouraging new creative businesses to settle in an area as it evolves) or how to use the creative industries as an short to middle-term solution to a regeneration challenge, aware that eventually the area may change its identity if and when the area becomes more prosperous, and therefore more expensive. Brick Lane is home to a range of businesses, creative and otherwise. From bookshops nightclubs and bars, to “retro” and second hand fashion retailers, to leatherwear wholesalers. The street is most famous for its Indian and Bangladeshi restaurants. There is a large creative business workspace in the converted Truman Brewery Building, home to some 300 businesses. Brick Lane is also home to Europe’s largest annual showcase of arts and design graduate showcases, Free Range. Run each summer and centred around July’s annual student graduation, it attracts over 150,000 visitors per year for its 8 week run. Other businesses illustrate the attraction of this creative quarter. The Rough Trade Records retail shop bucks the depression in physical retail for records. Its large premises is an outlet for not just CDs and books, but vinyl records too. It sells records by the Rough Trade label (and others in its related Beggars Group roster), and a “curated” selection of other related releases. It does not follow the model of a high-street retailer, rather a niche, independent specialist shop. The Big Chill Bar . This is the first branded venue from The Big Chill. Started by Katrina Larkin and Pete Lawrence in year? as a one-nighter in the back room of a London church, the Big Chill first grew into an annual festival in the UK and overseas, a small record company, and eventually this and another bar. The Big Chill has recently been bought by Festival Republic, but the three venues, the Big Chill Bar in Brick Lane and Bristol and House (in London’s Kings Cross) retain the brand. Lessons that can be drawn by the Big Chill include: the power of driven, creative individuals at the heart of a business; the fact that creative businesses rarely business plan, rather let their businesses organically develop around their enthusiasms and competencies, and; the precariousness of creative businesses. Although the brand still lives on and can be considered a success story, The Big Chill has been bought by outside investors twice in its 10 year life. Both times were distress purchases due to loss-making in its festivals. 2pm Lunch at Tayyabs award winning Punjabi Pakistani restaurant Tayyabs Restaurant is family owned (now in its second generation) and has grown from one small cafe, to a parade of daytime cafe, to Pakistani sweetshop, to evening restaurant. The three shops have been amalgamated into one premises in the last five years. The restaurant is inexpensive and always full, both daytimes and evenings. Restaurant critics and the public alike often vote it as one of the UK’s best South Asian restaurants.  3.30pm Meeting with Judith Knight and Gill Lloyd, Directors of ArtsAdmin and tour of building. ArtsAdmin is based in Toynbee Hall and acts as a producer and representative of a number of artists whose work can be broadly categorised as “non-mainstream theatre”. The business receives funding from a number of sources, but its most substantial funding comes from Arts Council England. One question that delegates were interested to answer was how the business could choose to subsidise selected creative individuals and businesses, and still stay the right side of EU competition law. That neither director knew the answer probably speaks clearly about the lack of understanding of the workings of the EU which is commonly held by UK businesses. The directors of ArtsAdmin acknowledged that their model was unusual. Their structure, with two co-directors was unusual also, as was the fact that beneath their premises there is a working proscenium arch theatre (albeit, one without a flytower), which was unexpected given the organisation’s mission and reputation as a champion of non-traditional spaces, however, anomalies such as this are not uncommon when creative businesses take on historical premises.  4.30pm Meeting with ArtsAdmin tenants All three businesses that we met who were resident in Toynbee Studios, Sophie Austin from theatre producers Dash Arts , Maija Handover of SoundUK and Helen Pike of the The National Federation of Artist Studio Providers . All organisations were in regular receipt of subsidy from Arts Council England. All organisations were small, “lean” organisations. For instance, Dash Arts operated with just four people, all with freelance contracts. Helen Pike of the NFASP distributed a guide to setting up artists studios to delegates please precis the useful parts of this and/or make copies available to the other CITIES partners 5.30pm Free time 7.45pm Walk to evening event: Bookslam at Shoreditch Town Hall (£8) Bookslam is a pioneering spoken-word night which aims to create a more informal setting for listening to live literature. It has grown from a monthly event in a 50 capacity club space, to one attracting over 300. This was its first event at the historic Shoreditch Old Town Hall . The town hall is not occupied by the local council, which has granted a 99 year lease to a independent trust to run and maintain it. They hired out for functions and events such as Bookslam. The audience for the event reflects the make-up of the area, diverse, but mainly younger (20s and 30s). The quality of the presentation and content is very high, compered by Charlie Dark and curated by founder, author Patrick Neate. Later in the evening I overheard an animated discussion between the Neate, the founder, and Elliott Jack, the manager and publicist, about the merits of the venue. Neate believed that it was still “wrong” for the event, lacking intimacy and good acoustics. Jack felt that the venue worked as it could accommodate a large number of people. This was an illustration of a tension at the heart of many creative businesses where “mission” based decisions (e.g. how to keep the quality as high as possible despite cost or commercial opportunity) are contrasted with straight “business” decisions that may maximise the growth of the business, but compromise its quality.   'Thursday 11th February, 2010' Due to the last-minute cancellation of the programmed visit to Canterbury and Whitstable by Canterbury City Council on the same morning, we quickly agreed a revised programme which took in the so-called “cultural-ribbon” that runs along the south bank of the river Thames from The London Eye in the west to the Design Museum in the East. Cultural activity in this area dates back to the building of the Royal Festival Hall, the centrepiece of the Festival of Britain in 1951. The growth of the area as a cultural precinct tells the story of a number of separate interventions: Infrastructure initiatives, such as renewing walkways along the Thames and access to the walkway from the surrounding area or building new walkways on Hungerford Bridge, linking the South Bank to Embankment Station and Trafalgar Square to the North #Community activism, such as the Coin Street and Gabriels Wharf development, the book market outside the National Film Theatre and the skateboard area underneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall #Private developments, such as Hays Galleria , The London Eye and More London #Location of subsidised cultural institutions, such as the National Theatre , Film Theatre, Tate Modern , South Bank Centre and Design Museum #Innovations propelled from within cultural organisations, such as the new parade of shops and restaurants facing the river under the South Bank Centre, or the renovation of the public spaces inside the venue. Alongside sound governance and excellent artistic programming at the artistic venues located in this area, these interventions work together to create more than the sum of their parts. Alone, no one intervention has created this area as a cultural quarter; together they complement one another to create one of London’s most exciting cultural areas. Discussion at All Bar One people - we add some contents asking other partners who took part in the discussion to contribute to the final version The discussion at All Bar One was very interesting, since it helped to focus on our recent experiences in London to fix some methodological issues. 1. UK Creative Industry's Mapping Document (1998 & 2001) was the starting point for any policy adressed to creative sector. Its goal was to identify and legitimate the creative sector in England, giving this way more strenght and identity to the creative businesses. This is a main task of the Public Sector. Without politcal commitment, it's hard to set up any effective policy. 2. Once Creative Sector is mapped, you can develope a strategic policy and real actions to support and foster the C.I. It's useful to share experiences and best practices, but be careful in transferring them to a different context. The meeting discussing Modena and Braga, and gave strong advice to find which kind of CI the city has and to focus on its local excellences: for example, food could be one of these. For Braga, it could be sacred art. These are two example of CI that are not immediately linked to "creativity" as it is normally defined. They are more considered part of traditional sector. But you can discover in them much more creativity than you expected. Creativity and innovation can emerge if you invest in new and unknown paths. One should explore what genuinely exists in your locality. It is worth bearing in mind that the UK's definition of "the creative industries" is something of a confection or concoction, with a range of industries (with different modes of production, finance and funding models and value chains) brought together to make an economic case for a group of industries which had hitherto not been considered a unified sector. The creative industries model as defined by the DCMS Mapping document is a distinctly British model - other countries therefore should not be surprised if it does not fit. When looking for your own models (especially when looking for external advocacy), a fast-and-loose approach might be that one example of a business is a case study, two is a coincidence, and three is a "sector"! 3. Peugeot's second ever manufactured product was a pepper grinder. It's a nice example of how creativity works. Les Frere Peugeot's pepper grinder became an architype upon which we are still manufacturing. Even when it was brand new, it was so elegantly designed that it went almost instantly from being "technology" to being "stuff". A thing works when you use it without thinking about the incorporated technology. The success depends on usability. 4. Head, heart, pocket are the three components you have to balance. Creative people use to give more value to heart. Businesses are focused on pocket. The challenge is to find a suitable equilibrium between "heart" and "pocket" through the head. 5. In planning new cultural and creative uses for old buildings and traditional spaces, take in mind three drivers: a) regeneration has to grow the value of venues in the area; b) to involve the local community in the regeneration process; c) define a distinct identity for an area 6. Clore Leadershipis a high professional training programme funded by The Clore Duffield Foundation and other funders, which selects every two years 25 people working in cultural and creative sector, coming from all over UK. Participants are paied in order to attend the programme; this way they can focus on it. People are trained on presentation skills, fund raising and financial issues. Clore Leadership's main achievement is not the training in itself, but the setting of links between people working in the sector, with the chance to develope formal partnerships, informal contancts and common projects. In fact, they also spend some weeks living together. Dinner at Jamie Oliver's Fifteen   'Friday 12th February 2010 ' 10.30am Walking tour of Spitalfields and surrounding area On the walking tour, we first stopped off at Circus Space , a converted electric substation. The facility teaches circus skills as informal evening classes, validated courses to tertiary education level and to corporate groups on “away-days”. Many of its alumni have gone on to have successful careers in the fields of circus, street theatre and ariel acrobatics. The space is beautifully realised, an unique facility and an example of what can be done when a underutilised building is given over to dedicated creatives with a vision for how the space can be converted and reimagined. We then visited the INIVA Gallery and their exhibition Progress Reports: Art in an era of diversity . The building that INIVA is situated in was designed by the British Architech, David Adjaye . I’m not a big fan of his other public buildings in London: the Whitechapel Library (“The Ideas Store ”), and the Bernie Grant Centre in Tottenham, but this gallery works okay. Its main gallery space is at least flexible and of a reasonable proportion, but I believe the building still suffers the same shortcoming of his other two London buildings: poor flow-through of common spaces (the bar is small and access to the upstairs spaces feels narrow and uneventful). The most striking aspect of the exhibition was the design of its brochure. The cover resembled a school notebook (complete with doodles and scribbles), with background notes of each art work being printed in black and white on a folded sheet of A4 paper, situated alongside each work, to be collected by the viewer if the work interested them. As well as being a cheap, elegant design solution, this method also allowed the gallery to track which works were more popular or interesting to the audience by counting the amount of notes taken on each specific work. Next: The Nike 1948 space. This is a shop. It is meant to cater for the “cooler” more discerning customer of Nike Sportswear (as opposed to the performance athlete). The space frequently incorporates art work and exhibitions and is home to the Run Dem Crew running club. It is an interesting example of a commercial business incorporating arts and culture into the fabric of its marketing, because of the long-term commercial benefits that this connection offers, as opposed to arts organisations approaching a commercial business for “sponsorship”. On the day we visited there was an exhibition of Dutch skateboard and surfer culture. We then went to the beleaguered Rich Mix cultural centre. I wanted to show how no amount of money thrown at a building or cultural project can save it if it hasn't a) clear direction, b) a clear guiding vision or c) strong governance . For the first time in its short history, it might now have a stable and capable management team, so we can hope that its prospects and cultural performance improve (especially with a new tube station and line opening just over the road in June 2010, which should make the venue much more accessible). Spitalfields Market . We made a whistle-stop tour of this converted market, which retains an indoor market specialising in clothing and crafts. The market has been retained partly because of local community lobbying, partly because of the “listed” status of the market building which means that it could not be demolished and partly because of the distinctive identity that this creative activity gives to a development of shops and offices that could otherwise feel anonymous. The integration of the cultural identity of the area was developed by Futurecity (their director, Mark Davy, was a speaker at the Klaipeda seminar) 1.15pm Meeting with Sophie Hayles, External Relations Officer, Whitechapel Gallery and tour of building The most striking aspects of the visit to the Whitechapel gallery were: #The professionalism and dedication of the staff (the external relations officer spoke passionately about the organisation, and really bought into the gallery’s purpose and vision) #The high quality of the whole operation. The building was immaculately decorated and finished throughout and, over and above the high quality of work on show, the exhibitions we visited were excellently installed #How busy the galleries were. We visited on a cold, rainy Friday afternoon. All the galleries were bustling with people. 3pm Meeting with Craig Brooks, Creative Director of The Creative Arms (creative business) Craig and Jamie run a design agency that they started a year ago. They illustrate many clustering habits that creatives engage in. Typically, they would never call their behaviours “clustering”, nor even recognise that they were acting in this way. For instance: They moved their business into an area which is perceived as creative They co-located with “friends” working in a complementary business (a PR agency), who were able to share work They worked in a converted, quirky, historical building They socialised locally and often heard about possible or up-coming work opportunities in these informal settings On checking out of the hotel, delegates were given a copy of independent music magazine, The Eye , to take with them. These were donated by the magazine’s founder and editor, John L Walters, who works in the Hoxton area. He suggested donating the magazines in response to AM’s call for businesses to meet the CITIES delegates put out on AM’s Twitter feed . The meetings with the The Creative Arms and ArtsAdmin also came about this way.